1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communication systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Communication systems such as wireless systems are designed to meet various demands of subscribers. Service providers continuously seek ways to improve the overall performance of the communication system. As wireless communications become more and more popular for subscribers to obtain data (i.e., email or information from the internet), communication systems must be capable of a higher throughput.
There are two directions of data flow in such systems. Communications from a base station to a mobile device are considered to flow in a downlink direction while the communications originating at the mobile device are considered to flow in an uplink direction. Most of the work in this area has focused on the downlink flow of information, which is to the mobile devices (typically from a base station, called “Node B” in the Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard, or UMTS).
In general, a given service coverage area is divided into multiple cells, with a base station (Node B) associated with one or more cells, as shown in FIG. 1. A scheduler at the base station selects a user for transmission at a given time, and adaptive modulation and coding allows selection of an appropriate transport format (modulation and coding) for the current channel conditions seen by the user. Accordingly, in scheduling, the Node B grants permission to one or more users at a time, rather than to allow data users to transmit autonomously. Typically, this is based on an estimate of each user's radio link quality in one of the downlink and uplink.
When user equipment is moved between cell sites, the Node B in each cell site prevents dropped signals by holding the signal in both cell sites until the transfer between cell sites is completed. This process is called a “soft handover.” More particularly, the Node B in the cell where the user equipment is originally located does not cut off the signal until it receives information from the Node B in the destination cell that it is maintaining the signal. Each Node B involved in the soft handover is considered part of an active set.
Each Node B also participates in power control, as it enables the user equipment to adjust its power using downlink transmission power control (TPC) commands via an inner-loop power control on the basis of uplink TPC information. Ideally, each Node B radio link involved in the soft handover receives the same TPC commands to control the transmitted power of the downlink channels (e.g., downlink data channels and downlink control channels). Due to errors in the uplink control channel radio links, however, the TPC commands received by each Node B may be different; for example, during soft handover, stronger radio links will have a lower probability of TPC bit errors than weaker radio links. If the radio link is extremely weak, the TPC bits received by the Node B will be random, breaking the inner-loop power control and potentially increasing the transmitted power of the weak link unnecessarily.
Because the inner loop at each Node B responds to the TPC commands it receives, cumulative TPC bit errors will cause the Node B transmitted power to drift substantially if the transmitted power levels of each Node B in the active set are left unsynchronized. Optimal downlink capacity is achieved if the values of the transmitted power of all the Node Bs in the active set are the same or nearly the same. If the transmitted power levels are not kept synchronized, the relative power spread between radio links increases, reducing downlink system capacity and increasing the probability of dropped signals during handover.
The UMTS standard specifies a downlink power adjustment procedure for adjusting the Node B transmitted power of the radio links in the active set. Although the UMTS standard defines the parameters, ranges and accuracy of the power adjustment procedure, the standard leaves open the specific method used to compute and apply the adjustment corrections.
There is a desire for a method that can adjust downlink transmitted power so that the values at each Node B in the active set is balanced.